Nove Mortes

9 people are kidnapped and tied up and told that unless they discover why they are there one of them will be killed every 10 minutes. It's a reasonably familiar tale but it's fun watching them try and discover why they are there.

The film features the usual eclectic mix, drug dealer, cops, priest etc. These type of films rely heavily on having interesting characters to watch and although there are plenty of clichés on show, I found the characters pretty entertaining. There isn't any SAW like gore in this film and most of the violence is off screen. I was a bit surprised to see Melissa Joan Hart from Sabrina the Teenage Witch fame in this and she is pretty good in this. The rest of the cast also put in decent believable performances.

As the captives piece together the puzzle and the numbers deplete it all winds down a bit to a slightly disappointing climax. The end scene being one of the most abrupt and unexplained I've ever seen.

Overall I found this a fairly enjoyable if limited thriller and probably wouldn't rush to watch it again.

Clarissa explains it all vs. Saw II : I really don't think there is a better way to sum this movie up. It's not 'horrible' and there are some anecdotes that actually make it a bit funny in a campy way if you are a cynical evil person like myself :) But to explain the above statement, the movie is a reductive of a Saw/Red Room type help captive facing death formula.

More interesting than an episode of Criminal Minds, but not much gorier, no truly unique or cool deaths but a few plot twists and turns that are interesting enough to finish watching - if not just to prove to yourself that you are more intelligent than the bozos the film focuses on.

A lot of people probably hated the ending, but i thought it was pretty funny and smug. Would have benefited by rolling Britney Spears - Crazy during the end credits. If you haven't seen that video since 1998 - whatever you should look it up.

Communication is the key to the survival for nine strangers who have been kidnapped by a masked gunman and told that one of them will die every ten minutes until they discover how they are all connected. Who of the nine lives and who dies?

I think it is safe to say that this film's biggest selling point is star Melissa Joan Hart, who also serves as a producer. I think it is also safe to say that she is the worst actor in this picture, being easily outdone by a handful of unknowns and Alec Baldwin's chubby brother Daniel.

The film has similarities to other films, notably "Saw 2" (a group of people all connected by a common, unknown bond) and "House of 9" (nine people -- including a priest -- in an enclosed location, getting killed one by one). This made me hesitant and have doubts, but I was soon shown the error of my ways. Rather than watch half-heartedly while doing other things, I had my eyes glued for 90 minutes to the screen. I was, frankly, impressed (though, again, Hart was a terrible casting choice).

I have to take issue with the glaring plot holes. The idea is that nine people have to find out what connects them. Once you find out what that thing is (and I will not reveal it here), it seems odd to me that the killer would know about the people's involvement in that thing. Some of them, yes, but most no. I guess I have to just let it ride...

A masked creep kidnaps 9 people, puts them in a room, handcuffs them to a tube. He tells them their mission is to find out why there are there. Every ten minutes he will kill one of them unless they tell him the answer. The group is made up of a cop, two street thugs, a Vegas strip joint owner/mobster, a DA, a priest, a homosexual, a goody two shoes guy, and an Asian woman who doesn't speak English. What ensues is the typical American psycho horror: a bunch of people screaming at each other, insulting each other, grandstanding, deceiving, unable to work together, sometimes trying to work together. Obviously, they won't be able to find the answer in the first couple of 10-minute blocks. They touch on an important issue but don't see it's significance until later. Eventually they start "confessing" their sins, what each did that could have made someone mad enough to devise such a plan. So we learn something about them all. But whenever 10 minutes are up, the masked guy shows up, picks one of them, tells him the reason why they are there and then kills him. How it all turns out is quite interesting, but the ending not satisfying at all.

I'm not a fan of the idiots-bickering subgenre of horror, but this one does work. It doesn't take the insulting to insufferable extremes like the reality-footage movies but rather focuses more on the story. And you do want to find out what the story is. Even though the answer to the puzzle is somewhat mundane it is effective. The ending however is so weak it's puzzling. Performances are very good overall, and that's really the key in a movie like this. And the movie does manage to build quite a bit of tension.

Not a bad watch for an afternoon. Nine apparent strangers are kidnapped and locked in a room until they figure out what they have in common. One is killed every 10 minutes until they figure it out.